Is Early Childhood Education Technology Moving Backwards? 290
theodp writes "Four decades ago, the NSF-sponsored PLATO Elementary Reading Curriculum Project (pdf) provided Illinois schoolchildren with reading lessons and e-versions of beloved children's books that exploited networked, touch-sensitive 8.5"x8.5" bit-mapped plasma screens, color images, and audio. Last week, the Today Show promoted the TeacherMate — a $100 gadget that's teaching Illinois schoolchildren to read and do math using its 2.5" screen and old-school U-D-L-R cursor keys — as a revolution in education. Has early childhood education managed to defy Moore's Law?"
Simple Rugged Durable = Better (Score:5, Insightful)
The latest and greatest techno-glitter is often not what's needed. The simple rugged device shown can get the interactive teaching job done, and probably endure getting dropped, kicked, and getting dumped in Cheerios.
Would you give an iPhone to a kid who is constantly throwing things around and having temper tantrums?
Often, simpler is better.
Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we plug them into X Interactivodular superintermodular digital box and have them staring at a generic "FUN!!1" learning program that teaches them to rotely memorize whatever miniscule number of factoids it can hold in it's tiny memory. Then we pick them up and shuttle them around all day on a million and one "Structured play-time" events before taking them home and expecting them to go to sleep on command after a hard day of sitting and doing what grownups tell them to.
We used to give them a stack of comic books, a box of legos, and enough kool-aid for them and whatever other kids in the neighborhood weren't grounded at the moment and tell them to figure it out for themselves.
Homework isn't (by default) fun, and "Structured play-time" is not good for kids. Learning is what you do so they're able to have options as an adult, and fun is anything they do voluntarily after they do the things they need to do but don't want to.
Let the little shiats skin their knees, scream their heads off, run around with their pants on their head, dig in the mud, and punch someone in their new best friend in the nose now and then. They'll thank you for it later.
Going backwards? (Score:5, Insightful)
IAAKT (I Am A Kindergarten Teacher) and I would not say that I'm going backwards by having my students use crayons, pencils, markers instead of plasma, touch sensitive displays. Nor am I going backwards by using chalk and a blackboard instead of powerpoint and multimedia displays to teach your children how to read and write.
Sometimes I often wonder if people push technology on children for the sake of making themselves look good ("Look, I introduced a bunch of 6yr olds to powerpoint and the web!").
Btw: Chalk/pencils/paper never run out of batteries, never get badly damaged when dropped. Never need an "IT Guy" on staff to fix/train/repair/upgrade. Also, I spend quite a bit of my own money on school supplies for the students. It's much easier to go to walmart and buy a box of pencils than it is to go to the school board and ask them to appropriate more funding so we can have more ebook readers so that every child gets one.
Moore's law? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wasn't aware there was a corollary dealing with childhood education. Or are you claiming, looking inside the old and new products, the transistor or storage density hasn't increased?
definitely an advance (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest mistake I see in education is trying to provide the coolest and latest tech, instead of thinking what is best for concept development. Especially at lower levels teaching specific tech is not so useful. The tech will change in 10 years. When I left school was the time when we moved from command line to GUI. Fortunately I knew concepts,so it mattered little.
The $100 price point is also a major benefit. Like calculators, all classroms could have a class set. Quite a change from the time when we had a single PLATO terminal.
Apples and Oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
In 1972 the PLATO IV terminals (the kind described in the summary) cost $12,000 [wikipedia.org]. Adjusting for inflation, that would be over $60,000 today. Moore's Law has worked some miracles, but as the OLPC project showed, creating a child-oriented, large screen portable computer for $100 is still out of reach.
The better question is whether throwing technology at the problem is going to actually help children learn. Of course, the experiment has to be done, but I wouldn't be surprised if, once again, teacher quality and home life quality are by far the dominant factors in student success.
Re:Yes. (Score:2, Insightful)
The summary reads:
when it should read:
Also, in Soviet America, newfangled toys play with you.
Where are the Sand (or Playdough) Tables? (Score:2, Insightful)
Only on slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Going backwards? (Score:1, Insightful)
IAAITG (I am an IT Guy) who has two small kids.
Computers are an essential skill for the 21st century.
My 4 year old can log onto my wife's PC, and start up nickjr.com all by herself. We got her a DS for christmas.
But, my limited experience with small kids has shown me that basic toys are just as good. Blocks, crayons, paper, paint, making forts, kicking a ball, etc... the basics are cheap, never break, don't need electricity, promote being active, etc... did I mention cheap? $5 worth of coloring books and markers can last a long time.
I like tech. Computers are fun. But for educational purposes.... they're just another tool.
As Clifford Stoll Said (Score:5, Insightful)
Computers don't emit "smartness radiation."
Computers in the class room have been around at least 25 years. There was an Apple ][ in every classroom when I was a kid. We used it to die of dysentery on the Oregon Trail. Did we learn anything about history? No. We learned to that all that settlers needed was a 99 rounds of ammunition.
Computers in the classroom are just the latest incarnation of the whiz-bang technology that would magically make improve education and test scores, without requiring any more work on the child's, parent's, or teacher's part. Just like television, movies, and filmstrips were hailed as an educator's silver bullet generations before. (Stoll wrote about this [amazon.com] 14 years ago, and it stills holds true.)
Anyone that has attended class in any "e-learning" classroom, can attest that of the regular occurrences of projectors that don't work. Video and audio links that fail. Overly sensitive microphones and the like. The amount of time wasted trying to just set things up before instruction can begin is non-trivial, and easily can accumulate to entire missed days of instruction. No thank you.
Watching passively, and just clicking "next" is not education. The reason why it's used for occupational training, is that because no one wants to acutally teach, nor learn. It's indemnification.
If you really want to improve education, how about removing the distractions, and actually teaching out of the book?
Article is a troll (Score:4, Insightful)
The article submitter must be trolling. Decades ago there existed a one-off prototype, which was never widely deployed, that was hugely expensive. Now there exists an inexpensive learning gadget that might actually be in the hands of actual kids, and this is "moving backwards"?
Next up: is the phone industry moving backwards? At a world's fair, AT&T demonstrated a working two-way color video phone, yet I don't have a video phone in my house yet. Of course, millions of people have full-color Internet on their phones, and can do things like view a photo of their home taken from orbit. And millions of people have practical teleconferencing via WebEx et al. But never mind that. The phone company doesn't have video phones in every house; we're moving backwards!
steveha
Re:Only on slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Simple Rugged Durable = Better (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right of course, and although it might be a minority opinion among fans of high-tech, the best "early-childhood education technology" is still interaction with parents, in a secure environment.
But with mommy and daddy having to work thirty percent more just to provide the same standard of living and real income as a single-breadwinner family in 1962, interaction with parents is increasingly in short supply.
Gotta feed Moloch, you know.
[Note: "Standard of living does NOT mean "the number of big screen TVs you have charged to your credit cards". It means "a home, food on the table, education and health care".]
Culture, not money (Score:5, Insightful)
If you bring children up in an environment where adults do not value education, don't be surprised when the children don't value it either. And when they do not value it, they aren't going to learn much.
I am not familiar with an effective rating scale, but I think one adult saying "Eeew, looks like Brain Work to me. No thanks!" within earshot of a child is probably -100 units whereas reading one children's book to the child is +1 unit. Similarly, suggesting that by learning the child is trying to "put on airs" is probably -500.
Today most of the people you meet on the street are suffering with a lifetime score of -50,000. If you are especially lucky the people you work with have only -1000 and somehow, dispite major obstacles managed to learn something.
In most schools getting good grades is utterly unacceptable to the peer social group. So the child can be an outcast with no friends or not - easy to choose, isn't it? This is the culture in the US today. A good part of it comes from the inner city "majorities" that have pretty much taken over there. Because of "white flight" to the suburbs where their children aren't exposed to an anti-education culture.
I recently saw a television program concerning a black educator trying to stir up some interest in children being educated and going on to college. Gasp, they might be successful! Biggest problem seemed to be that they had to pick and choose the children because so many were already infected by a culture that told them being educated was socially unacceptable.
If this problem isn't solved, no matter what technology is put into the classroom the situation is just going to get worse and worse. Cheap Chinese-made toys aren't going to fix anything. Expensive PLATO terminals aren't going to fix anything. Changing the culture is the only way.
Re:Going backwards? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if part of the problem is this: When you buy pencils for your classroom, you have to pay for them out of pocket because the school is too cheap to do so. But if you ask for shiny new technology, the school board might decide to pay for it with the funds that could have bought a decade's supply of pencils for every classroom in the school.
Sigh.
Teachers Colleges are not teaching technology (Score:4, Insightful)
During the summer I work around many education majors, and I can tell you that teachers are not being taught anything about technology in teaching programs. Most times they have less technical skills than your average college students. They can't work their ipods or simple digital cameras and they often have trouble using basic web sites to fill in web forms. It's all anecdotal, but I see the same thing year after year and I've seen it even going back to my own teachers in the 1980s.
Anyway, I am apt to agree with other comments in this thread. I am for tech in the classroom, but it's not going to do any good with the teachers we are putting out in the field. The best and brightest don't go into elementary education, and right now the jobs aren't there. We need tech education for our kids to succeed, but there will have to be some other fundamental fixes made before that curriculum is even possible.
Think of the Apollo program (Score:5, Insightful)
Assume the average age of the Apollo program engineers was 40 in 1969.
That means they were in elementary school in the late 30s and early 40s -- what kind of "technology" were they taught with? Chalk, pencils and books -- maybe even slide rules and a compass. And those guys figured out how to put men on the moon!
I do work with schools occasionally and am appalled at the money pissed away on worthless shit like smartboards and computers & software that go obsolete faster than the districts can implement them. And after that I hear the ridiculous appeals from administrators who claim they don't have enough money to fix broken windows, paint the walls or other basic maintenance, because they pissed it all away on technology that is useless in 4 years and literally junk in 8. I want to cry when they say they need to raise my taxes for it.
Technology probably has more of a place in junior and senior high schools, but even then at a fraction of the level they try to implement it at.
Re:Only on slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, no matter that the 1970's product cost $12,000, which in todays dollars is $60,000 - or 600 times more expensive than this little $100 thing.
Moore's law indeed.
Re:Huge problem (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not to say that there haven't been serious consequences from phasing out those jobs and shipping them overseas, just that it's not the romantic reasons one might expect.
Re:Simple Rugged Durable = Better (Score:5, Insightful)
The latest and greatest techno-glitter is often not what's needed.
You were headed in the right direction, but some how missed the destination.
What proof is there that any technological solution is productive or effective? Why bemoan a shrinking screen size when shrinking goals explains shrinking results.
Pencil and Paper generally don't distract the student from the task at hand. And the budget for those can be managed with pocket change.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple Rugged Durable = Better (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm a firm believer that a dedicated parent can do a better job of educating one's children than the public school system.
Just remember that said dedicated parent could also be crazed creationist fundamentalist wackos.
Re:last useful ed tech was... (Score:4, Insightful)
Powerpoint makes making presentations easier, thus it makes it easier to make a bad presentation. Previously, someone wouldn't bother to even make a presentation, they'd just give a bad speech. Now they give the same speech but have some worthless pictures in the background at the same time. When the majority of users aren't going to put in the necessary amount of effort to make a good presentation, it's no wonder that most powerpoint presentations suck. That's no reason to blame powerpoint though, it's just lazy users.
As for student presentations, it's the fact that teachers don't bother correcting a student when they make a shit presentation. A student making a well thought out presentation with helpful slides usually gets an A. A student that copy and pastes text onto the slides, and then stares at the screen and reads the text to the class also usually gets an A. The teacher doesn't have the time to explain how to use powerpoint well because they're busy teaching the subject that they're supposed to be teaching. (i.e. econ teacher is busy teaching econ and can't take a week out of the curriculum to explain how powerpoint works). So if the teacher were to give the kid an F, then the parents show up bitching about how the teacher didn't explain powerpoint and how dare they give their kid an F, etc.
Summary: When someone builds a shitty house, you don't blame the hammer. Same with shitty presentations and powerpoint.
Children do not need electronics to learn. (Score:4, Insightful)
Children do not need electronics to learn. Wasting money on gadgets will not make children learn faster or be smarter. It's an utter waste of educational funds to start k-3 on computers. Even with 4th & 5th graders, the best thing to start them on is typing, which means a cheap, old hand-me-down-computer is sufficient. That's assuming the 4th grader's hands are big enough to start touch typing. We still have far too many adults that can't touch type. Kids will learn all other aspects of computers fast enough on their own.
The main reason I see for having ocmputers at home, especially for the kids, is mainly for playing games. Education is and has always been a minor part of that equation. Kids have enough toys these days and need to get off their rear and go play outside. We've got more than enough unhealthy fat adults and we're getting too many unhealthy fat children these days.
Re:This is a joke, right? (Score:5, Insightful)
My early child hood technology consisted mainly of books, Play-doh, LEGOs, magnifying glasses, hammers, nails and scrap blocks of wood from a paint brush handle factory down the street. And I fail to see how that early education "tech" could have been improved by an e-version of anything.
Re:As Clifford Stoll Said (Score:3, Insightful)
"But did you learn something about computers? Chances you did learn something if you are now on Slashdot. The role of computers should be to provide a shiny toy for students to want to figure out how it works. To learn reading to play an RPG, to learn history to learn the backstory behind war games, etc."
Well, I learned about computers from Commodore and later Atari computers I had at home. The Apple 2 in school was a locked down box that you could do nothing on but play crappy edutainment (Am I the only one on Slashdot that thought Oregon Trail was just boring crap that didn't really teach anything?) The teacher would prevent you from doing anything that would result in you learning about how computers work. Did your teacher let you take them apart, try to write programs, or even give a basic explanation of the hardware? I had to wait until we got the Commodore to learn anything useful about computers.
"And how many kids who are have graduated still remember watching The Magic School Bus and Bill Nye the Science Guy? My guess is a lot of them."
And what has a generation of watching Bill Nye done to improve science education? It's worse than ever, the number of students pursuing science degrees has been declining. And actual understanding of science in the population is atrocious.
"Because that would be removing over half the class and relying on a book that is usually severely out of date?"
What are you teaching in elementary schools that's completely out of date? Math? Writing? Reading? Social Skills?
History is the only thing that arguably needs to be up to date, but that doesn't mean that you need to replace a 10 year old history book, it's still accurate from the Big Bang to 2000AD (or the last 6000 years, if you're and IDiot.) You can still learn a lot from a 50 year old history book.
The sad thing is that a lot of these technologies are pushed to teach kids computers, when most kids already know how to use one.
Re:Simple Rugged Durable = Better (Score:5, Insightful)
Public schools have to accept hordes of kids whose indifferent parents dump them there for free daycare. And those kids drag down the whole system.
No technology, it's the human touch that's vital (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not technology that's needed; quite the contrary: it's intimate human contact. READ to them, tell stories, interact. That's what children need because it's how children learn: listening, interacting, being HUMAN. The technology is a boondoggle in this. Love your kids, play with them, READ to them, be real people. For some slashdot folks that might be challenge enough.
Re:Simple Rugged Durable = Better (Score:3, Insightful)
Also consider that your public school teacher might also be one of those. "You never know what you're gonna get."
Re:This is a joke, right? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Simple Rugged Durable = Better (Score:5, Insightful)
He was proficient on the PC at 1. A week after his 2nd birthday he did his first Ubuntu install. (No, he couldn't read. Yes, it is really more an example of just how easy it is to install Linux.) He started reading just before three, and started working on electronics projects soon after. At 5, he is currently working on his multiplication, division, and improving his writing skills. He reads as well as many of the kids I went to high school with. ( Yes, that is as much a slight against the public school kids as it is bragging about my own.) When he wants to know something new, he has no problem getting on Google and finding it.
Get real. How the hell is one "proficient" on the PC at 1 if at 2 you're still unable to read? Anyone who can read and write minimally and push buttons can look something up on Google. If you're not careful, your delusions are going to be as detrimental as your coaching are going to be helpful. If your son is brilliant (and he may be), you've offered little in the way of proof. You have however proven you're probably not well equipped to judge his ability as you're way too biased.
Do you really want your child to be a genius? Do you have any idea how hard life is for a prodigy? Why would any parent wish that upon their child?
How much socialisation is he getting? What are his social skills going to be like when he's a little older? What about his ability to tolerate stupidity all around and still produce results? It takes a long time and practice to learn to get along with the other monkeys they share the planet with. Learning to put up with a teacher or classmates that don't like you, as well as learning to form friendships by making others feel good about themselves without a parent in arms reach to fall back on is important. Possibly just as important as academic skills if you want to have a happy life.
I have a 1 year old. Some days he does some very clever things. Other day's he does things that are so bone headed that i wonder how we managed to make it out of the trees. That's what a one year old does.
Re:Huge problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Get out onto the business floor with people who work on data entry and stuff like that, or just out into other industries and you'll see what I mean.
- Pitabred
Re:Simple Rugged Durable = Better (Score:3, Insightful)
You really have to trust yourself and your parenting skills. We raised our kids to expose them to as wide a diversity of ideas and cultures as possible. We weren't afraid that they would be corrupted by strange ideas. It really taught them to be better thinkers and more resilient adults. The real world out there is full of lots of strange people and ideas and it is much better to have the skills to deal with these ideas than to be protected from exposure to them. You can't protect your kid forever so you need to give them the critical thinking skills to deal with life.
I really don't understand the irrational fear of 'government school brainwashing'. All public school education in the US is governed by local school boards who are elected by popular vote and if you don't like the curriculum, run for the school board. School boards are often some of the most hotly contested elections where your voice can make a difference. Now, if you are a fearful religious whackjob, you won't get elected and will home school your kid but that is your right. I think the kid would be much better served by attending a diverse public school than the narrow education you will give him or her but you do have that right.
Re:Simple Rugged Durable = Better (Score:1, Insightful)
Do you really want your child to be a genius? Do you have any idea how hard life is for a prodigy? Why would any parent wish that upon their child?
imho, the more you think this way, the harder it will be for a prodigy to live.
i'm not a genius, yet a little above average, and yes, i hate stupidity more then anything else, but if i could choose, i'd like to be even more intelligent.
99% of the world won't like me? fsck them. i LIKE thinking and i am intelligent enough to find other people like me.
ignorance is bliss? that's the most stupid thing I've ever heard. intelligent people are the one who built this world, the stupid thoose who are ruining it.
just imagine a wolrd full of stupid people. it would fall apart in little time.
intelligence means unhappiness only in a stupid world. so thank you for killing happiness for those who keep improving *your* life.
Re:Culture, not money (Score:3, Insightful)
You're missing something very very very important: in working-class professions, education in the sense that college-educated people usually talk about it doesn't actually help much. What really helps, and what actually gets kids who expect to be part of the working class interested in their schooling, is vocational programs.
Which is of more benefit to a future auto mechanic: The Tempest by William Shakespeare, or a practicum in how to replace an alternator? Similarly, future farmers who are working on the family farm typically get quite an education about farming from dad and/or granddad. Future electricians need to know more about how to properly connect up a breaker box than they do about Ohm's Law.
A good bricklayer, welder, or child care worker is not a failure. They might not be getting really rich, but they're usually earning decent money doing something that is beneficial to society. In fact, for a lot of the kids attracted to vocational training, skilled trades are a significant step up from the sorts of jobs their parents did, and are their best opportunity to make a good life for themselves. They take it, and well they should. It's a big improvement over, say, working at Walmart, and getting into those sorts of professions is usually much more possible for them than trying to become an astrophysicist.